almost normal changes

Young pho­tog­ra­pher Clemens Bech­mann has a cou­ple of series online where he doc­u­ments the impact of humans on the envi­ron­ment. In his visual research, he con­cen­trates upon the less spec­tac­u­lar and not widely dis­cussed changes. His first two series are about a mil­i­tary train­ing area with a fake vil­lage called “Ali Babba City”, and the build­ing of a new golf course on the isle of Sylt. Another work shows signs of the mea­sures to reg­u­late the moun­tain areas for the touris­tic indus­tries. For his lat­est series he recorded some of the numer­ous broth­els along Span­ish roads. Pros­ti­tu­tion in Spain recently became a boom as never seen before, with­out any clear reason.

Some­how Bech­manns work has a marked appear­ance by being out of tune with the “nor­mal” time of the sub­ject. The golf course misses the green, the mil­i­tary area misses its sol­diers, the moun­tains miss the snow and the clubs miss the night with its neon lights. I am curi­ous where he takes us in his next series.

Con­nect­ing deci­sion mak­ers to a dynamic net­work of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accu­rately deliv­ers busi­ness and finan­cial infor­ma­tion, news and insight around the world.

#Data_Rush_Days: Now you get another rea­son to go visit Gronin­gen, the city where pub­lic space feels like a huge liv­ing room, where res­i­dents bring their ceramic mugs with them on the bike, and where you can see locals cross­ing the street wear­ing piya­mas, their daily clothes and fresh undies tucked under one arm as if on the way to the dorm show­ers. And where you can rent bikes at the train sta­tion for a tour of the Noorder­licht Pho­tog­ra­phy Inter­na­tional Photofes­ti­val.

Motorists woke up one mid-70s morn­ing to find new one-way streets made direct crosstown jour­neys impos­si­ble by car. Forty years later Gronin­gen boasts two-thirds of all trips made by bike … and the clean­est air of any big Dutch city

Yosuke Sakoda, another one of the con­tes­tants of the Tokyo Inter­na­tional Pho­tog­ra­phy Fes­ti­val (competition.tipf.jp/), is some­one I may have oth­er­wise over­looked when pass­ing by his reg­u­lar por­to­lio web­site, but then there was this small series he has about a Zoo, set very much apart from his com­mer­cial work. Maybe it doesn’t amount to much, or you may think the work is cheesy (should be re-edited?) but it just stayed with me for that split sec­ond too long to let it go with­out a men­tion. (But I con­fess to have a spe­cial thing for ani­mals in pho­tographs).

Call for appli­ca­tions: Pro­gram for Emerg­ing Artists from South Asia

To apply, you must be a South Asian artist of any medium who uses your work to draw atten­tion to the areas of eco­nomic, pol­icy, and social issues of your par­tic­u­lar con­text. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion will be paid to artists whose work is related to SAI’s ongo­ing research projects: southasiainstitute.harvard.edu/projects/.

Your coun­try of res­i­dence must be within South Asia (A̲f̲g̲h̲a̲n̲i̲s̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲B̲a̲n̲g̲l̲a̲d̲e̲s̲h̲,̲ ̲B̲h̲u̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲I̲n̲d̲i̲a̲,̲ ̲M̲y̲a̲n̲m̲a̲r̲,̲ ̲N̲e̲p̲a̲l̲,̲ ̲P̲a̲k̲i̲s̲t̲a̲n̲,̲ ̲o̲r̲ ̲S̲r̲i̲ ̲L̲a̲n̲k̲a̲), with par­tic­u­lar pref­er­ence for artists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myan­mar, Nepal, or Sri Lanka, as SAI seeks to cre­ate unique oppor­tu­ni­ties for to engage with artists from coun­tries that have less rep­re­sen­ta­tion at Har­vard.This oppor­tu­nity is to meant to rec­og­nize and show­case the art­work of up-and-coming artists who would greatly ben­e­fit from facil­i­tated con­nec­tions with Har­vard fac­ulty and stu­dents, the oppor­tu­nity to show their work at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, and strengthen their con­tin­ued work in their coun­try of ori­gin.

#Data_Rush_Days: With minor hick ups such as the hack of ‘smart’ car or awe over the satel­lite dri­ven har­vest­ing sys­tems, the inter­net of things has begun to appear on the hori­zon of the under­stand­ing of the gen­eral pub­lic (which means most of us in the devel­oped world). But are we pay­ing enough atten­tion to the ram­i­fi­ca­tions?

Future For­ward news­pa­per The Guardian web­site has ded­i­cated a sec­tion explor­ing a vari­ety of issues sur­round­ing the Inter­net of Things, to inform, alarm and acti­vate us.